The invention relates to a container carrier comprising a blank made of a foldable sheet material, in particular cardboard, for wrapping around a plurality of containers, in particular bottles.
From the DE-C2-25 51 007 a wraparound carrier for bottles is known which comprises side panels hingedlyjoined to a bottom panel and top panel portions hingedly joined to said side panels. The top panel portions are adhesively bonded together so as to overlap for closing the wraparound carrier and reinforcing a handle area between two handle openings in the top panel portions. For a further reinforcement the inner top panel portion besides comprises a handle reinforcing tab which is bonded to its outer surface. Said outer surface in turn is adhesively secured to the outer top panel portion, so that a handle area of triple ply thickness is formed. Such bottle carriers can already be preglued by the manufacturer of collapsible packing cartons so as to form a wrap and can be supplied with said wraps being arranged in the flat one upon the other. The bottle carriers will be unfolded by the packer then and be filled through a front end opening. Finally, they are closed by the packer by moving front end tabs within front end openings and adhesively bonding said front end tabs to one another.
The carrier of containers consists of a one-piece blank of a kraftboard which is made of a coated material because of the usual imprinting on the outer surface. Thus, it is based on a relatively expensive cardboard material.
Taking this into consideration, it is the object of the present invention to provide a container carrier of the type described at the beginning which has the necessary strength in the area surrounding the handle but is more cost-effective.